strangers
by ChidoriQueen
Summary: Because all of those pretty lies and slivered smiles- well, they can make up for a pile of rubble and those broken, broken walls. Momoka/Yuri/Tabuki, introspective one-shot.


**STOP BEING SO FASCINATING PENGUINDRUM UGH**

**So, here's my second attempt at a fic that still sucks. At least try to enjoy yourself.**

* * *

Yuri Tokikago is ugly, and no one fails to impress this upon her more than her father. Blonde hair far too frizzy, beyond the help of any hairbrush or comb, fingers too stubby and clumsy, always trailing cookie crumbs across her plain dresses, cheekbones low and chin too pointy and nose squashed and-

Imperfections. All of it.

So he chisels.

"Come along, Yuri," her father coaxes, beckoning her over to the silver table, a belt of perfect instruments strapped to his waist. Tools were always immaculate, with their jagged edges that cut gently sloping contours of crimson before she could cry out in pain.

She obliges (she always does), and stares dreamily as the blurred ceiling as he, with his slender artist's fingers, hacks, carves, and trims, leaving her blotchy skin smeared with blood and tears. He eventually stops, disgruntled, and drapes a white shirt over her trembling body, crossing the studio to finger his sculptures; the lovingly carved faces of creamy marble staring blankly back at her.

Pert noses. High foreheads. Full lips.

The kind of beautiful she will never be.

* * *

Yuri is a sinner.

They taunt her for the bandages on her face and encircling her wrists, like harpies that gleefully pounce on her, tearing her carefully structured walls with their words. Words like chains and whips and scythes, words that sting more than her father's knives and a desperate yearning for beauty ever could.

She cradles the purpling bruise on her jaw, holds in her tears because she's even uglier when she cries.

* * *

Yuri is a traitor, to her feelings, to her father, to everything she has ever stood for.

Because there is a girl who threatens to tear it all apart. She's the beautiful one, with her magenta tresses and low-sweeping bangs, with those pursed lips and wide amber eyes and a smile that stretches across the expanse of her girlish face.

Momoka Oginome.

"Say, Yuri," the use of her first name prompts a cringe, "do you believe in fate?"

She's breathless, a little flustered, toying with the edge of her plaid jumper and knocking her heels against the legs of the park bench. Never still, always in fluttery motion- like a bird, ready to take flight at the slightest disturbance.

A stone dropped into a pond, sending gentle ripples to Yuri's tiny corner of the universe.

There's a boy, too- Keiju Tabuki. He's quiet, shy, and blushes when Momoka takes his hand. Yuri notices his bandaged hands, the way he curls them into his palm, winces when she squeezes them.

He's just as broken as she is.

* * *

Yuri is a ghost.

Tabuki looks stunned, and the Oginomes weep as they cradle their newborn baby, a tiny thing with a sweeping nose and mousy strands of chocolate-brown hair, diary clasped in her stubby fingers. She's a little pink-faced, a little more scrunched-up, but this is _Momoka_.

It's fate, she knows it. Momoka dead, a body encased in rubble and pale, misshapen fingers peeking underneath a toppled subway sign, and Ringo risen, a mere shadow of her former glory.

So Yuri vows.

* * *

Yuri is a star.

As it turns out, she's not as ugly as she's led to believe. She's a petite girl in a noisy city of soaring skyscrapers and cigarette-littered pavements without a single lick of makeup on her face when she discovers the advertisement in the corner of the Sunday newspaper. Gazing around at her decrepit rented apartment, she pores through the fine print; _Actresses Wanted._

She starts off small- as a flower girl in some Mozart production or other. Soon, with pounds upon pounds of concealer smeared across her face, she graduates to bigger and better roles, until she's playing a fairytale princess with lush eyelashes and a frilly dresses.

Standing beneath crimson swaths of cloth and elaborate set pieces, she sings of love and red threads of destiny- things she's never been able to believe in.

* * *

Yuri is an enigma.

To the prying eyes of the world, she's Yuri Tokikago, the beautiful actress the gives her fans a quick, one-armed embrace, a scribble on a smiley photograph, and words coated in a thick layer of gritty honey.

But to Keiju Tabuki, the one who's always watched and waited, she's a familiar stranger.

Their meetings are brash and fleeting at first, little run-ins in the city she's now grown enough to stand proudly in. A polite word here in there, a tip of the hat, until one day, they make a pact, standing at an abandoned street corner and sharing an umbrella.

"Be together?" She frowns, tastes her lip-gloss like candied fruit. "What makes you say that?"

It's not that he's unattractive; if anything, he's grown into that gawky form of his.

"Momoka will have wanted it," he says solemnly, tip of his nose glassy with rain. She kisses the droplets off of his forehead, breathes in his musky scent of cheap cologne. They press together, clothes damp, and no more words are spoken.

* * *

Yuri is a liar- to herself, and to him.

The scent of her vanilla perfume branded onto his scarred hands as she cocoons herself into his chest in the still of the night, bruised fingertips gliding across his chest; _touch, touch, touch._

"I love you," she sobs to his sleeping form, pretending that it is not him who lies on their shared bed, but bubblegum locks and unblinking amber eyes. She could drown in them, like honeycombs that imprison uncareful fingers, like tree sap that ensnares a fly in its sticky grasp.

As she tosses and turns on the silk sheets that burn into her skin, she wonders if this self-indulgence will ever end.

* * *

Yuri is a wordsmith.

They sit together in a quaint cafe, sipping cups of Earl Grey tea as the dusk swamps them.

Yuri delicately sets her cup back onto its dish as the jittery waitress arrives, carrying with her a porcelain tray of cookies. She gives her a tight-lipped smile and a quick utterance of thanks, plucking one off the plate and nibbling at it daintily. Her eyes are tilted upwards, lashes fluttering against her cheeks as she watches him copy her delicate movements.

They eat in stony silence for a moment.

"These eclairs are lovely, aren't they?" Tabuki says, tongue darting out to lick the crumbs speckling his lips. "I told you you'd love this place."

"That you did," is her simple reply as she turns to gaze out the window, hands folded in her lap. She feels it, knows he can too- the ghostly curtain of intangibility veiling them, a barred cage biting back vicious snarls and things not said. The gap is tiny, only a husk of the truth drifting through to meet their jaded ears.

She thinks of the crimson threads, the ones that bring soulmates together from across the bridges of another world. Except, love isn't what she has with Tabuki. It's what they've both lost. A way of quieting past demons with two faceless puppets that could only say those three little meaningless words.

Love, love, love, love.

But she knows it's only hate.

* * *

Yuri is a thief.

Her eyes, deep and rich and chocolate brown and emphatic, stare her down, lips pursed into a mousy little frown. Her hair is short and hopelessly plain, lacking that bubblegum-pink flair and grassy scent, hips wide and hourglass-shaped.

Yuri longs to run her hands up and down her curves, ghost across every dip and crevice of her abdomen, press her face to the soft fabric of her skirt, trail her cold fingers across her creamy thighs.

_Momoka. _

_Witch_, the girl thinks, arms wrapped around a simmering pot of curry.

But that's alright, Yuri thinks.

Because it doesn't hurt to become something you already are.

* * *

Yuri is crying.

She flicks a switch in the chic kitchen of their new apartment at 2 AM, one night when he's snoring on the edge of their canopy bed and she can't seem to fall into the embrace of sleep. Her teary eyes blink away the darkness as she stumbles forward and grabs an apple from a bowl of fruit. A drawer is opened, a silver knife with a wooden handle grabbed. She hacks mercilessly at the innocent yellow flesh, the juice darting up and splashing onto her face. What was once a slightly misshapen fruit is now a pile of browning mush, and she's breathing heavily and sobbing and, oh God, she just doesn't know _why_.

Blood trickles from a prick on her thumb. She brings it to her mouth, tasting the metallic flavor. It hurts, more than she expected it to, since the blood won't stop flowing and it feels like her mouth will always taste this way. When she licks her lips, blood. When she brushes her teeth, blood. When she goes out for dinner and pretends she's savoring a plate of chocolate eclairs, blood. Forever and always.

But this is nothing compared to what Momoka endured. Nothing she's ever done in her life compares to what Momoka's done for her, to the sacrifice, to the lessons in gentle voice she's given her, to the reassurances that she's beautiful and important and she's loved.

It only serves as a reminder as to why she and Tabuki are together. To restore the beauty of a memory, of a past life, of a dream, to the universe, to their own selfish, isolated world. To bring solace, to concoct a semblance of an ordinary family, to honor the wispy ghost of a girl with twinkling eyes.

Because all of those pretty lies and slivered smiles- well, they can make up for a pile of rubble and those broken, broken walls.

It's their inescapable destiny.

And, if anyone knows a thing about destiny, it's Yuri Tokikago.


End file.
